USDA Web Soil Survey GIS interface notes for GIS novice AutoCAD users

USDA Web Soil Survey can import and export in GIS format.
IMPORT
You can use AutoCAD MAPEXPORT with the *.SHP format to make a shapefile for a polyline representing your Area Of Interest for Web Soil survey. If you use -MAPEXPORT (within a script or LISP routine) AutoCAD will fail to create the PRJ file that Web Soil Survey wants unless you use Options to select the coordinate system (even if already selected).

EXPORT
When you Download Soils Data from Web Soil Survey, you get a zip file that contains many (I count six) "maps" (sets of files with the same base name) in the spatial folder. I believe that the "a", "l", and "p" letters may be GIS conventions for "area", "line", and "point". I am not sure. To get polylines with data, you have to check the convert polygons box and choose to import data under the data column.